I think GP is thinking further back to ol' Ma Bell. If Bell hadn't been broken up, and competition-promoting regulations put in place, there would have been no

I think GP is thinking further back to ol' Ma Bell. If Bell hadn't been broken up, and competition-promoting regulations put in place, there would have been no need for municipal exclusivity agreements--Bell would have been the only carrier out there in the first place. It's possible that Cable could eventually have grown to compete technologically, but in a world where Bell was still a single unregulated entity, it strikes me as unlikely that cable could have survived independently.